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Your Prize Is Hanging Out With Dudes

Your Prize Is Hanging Out With Dudes

Congratulations. You are a true Woman of Merit and Courage. You have passed through the Fires of Understanding; you have hewn your way through the Elaborate Hedge Maze of Adversity. You have truly proven yourself to be an Exemplary Member of your sex. We commend you for your bravery, your fortitude, and your ability to just be chill and not make a big deal out of things, you know? You’re just laid back. Which we on the Gender Committee really appreciate.

You have undergone many trials in the last year, and lost many friends. They were lesser beings. They perished, and rightly so, as they could not hang with us. You, however – you are capable of hanging, and as a reward for your efforts you shall be granted the highest prize available to a woman of your caliber.

Your prize is Hanging Out With Dudes. More »

Moments I Would Kill Myself In Recent Horror Movies

Moments I Would Kill Myself In Recent Horror Movies

In every horror movie, the question that I find hardest to answer is Why are the main characters not committing group suicide? Is the ratio of heroes to normal people really that high? At what point does an existence that consists largely of fleeing in terror, fashioning makeshift tourniquets, and hiding breathlessly in the ark from slavering murderers kind of just…not seem worth it? More »

Welcome To Ironside Fitness

Welcome To Ironside Fitness

INT. DAY. GYM.

Assorted WOMEN in workout clothes climb stepping machines in the background. A LUNKHEAD benches carefully in the free weights area. A class of PILATES ENTHUSIASTS unrolls their mats as a smiling YOUNG WOMAN steps into view and addresses the camera.

WOMAN
Welcome to Ironside Fitness.

She walks past a middle-aged woman concentrating on a set of lat pulldowns and gives her a high-five. More »

The Girl Who Fell In Love By Herself

The Girl Who Fell In Love By Herself

Once there was a girl who lived alone, but she was not as alone as she wanted to be. She lived in the heart of a city, a middling city, a city of no great importance by the sea, and every day she walked through crowds and against crowds and around crowds, and heard the people’s conversations, and smelled their trash, and saw their children, and waited politely for their cars to pass before crossing the street.

So she took herself and she moved further west in the city, where the streets flattened out and the sun took its time setting in the evening and there was room for her. This was better, but she was still almost never alone. There was always someone coming around the next corner, always a car idling down the street, always someone’s voice echoing from a few houses over. Someone always needed something, someone always wanted something.
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Discarded Pages From Mary Baker Eddy’s Journal

Discarded Pages From Mary Baker Eddy's Journal

Church of Christ, Babysitter
Church of Christ, Doctor of Chiropractic Medicine (DC)
Church of Christ, Doctor of Education (EdD)
Church of Christ, Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Church of Christ, Amateur Sociologist
Church of Christ, Mountaineer
Church of Christ, Magistrate
Church of Christ, Master of Architecture
Church of Christ, Master of Advanced Study degree in American Media & Popular Culture More »

Bachelor Behind The Scenes: Women Tell All

Bachelor Behind The Scenes: Women Tell All

It’s been four months since the taping of this season of The Bachelor wrapped.

And on Friday night in a studio in Hollywood, Sean Lowe and 18 of his (rejected) women reunited to tape The Bachelor: Women Tell All episode, airing March 4 on ABC (8 p.m.).

“We should be out in 8 to 10 hours, if we’re lucky,” joked host Chris Harrison to the studio audience.

“Chris Harrison sleeps on a bed of human skin.”
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The Hall of Shame

The Hall of Shame

“…So that’s the kitchen. If you’ll come with me this way – just come right through the door but watch your step there, the beam comes down a little lower than it does in the rest of the house – okay, great – this is the hallway that connects the living area to the master suite. [Pause].

Oh, the sign? Yes, technically this is a Hall of Shame. No, a Hall of Shame. Past it we come into the main bedroom…Sure, of course, I’m happy to talk about it. It’s a fairly standard feature for most homes of this style in the neighborhood. Like most Halls of Shame, it acts as a general repository of all the shame, attacks of conscience, nostalgia, regret, qualms, pangs of remorse and overall dissatisfaction that the homeowner accumulates during the lease…[unintelligible] No, during the time of the lease only.
More »

Book Covers, In Order Of Knee-Jerk Purchaseability

Book Covers, In Order Of Knee-Jerk Purchaseability

Nothing but the title: 10%. Likely inscrutable, almost certainly excessively highbrow.

A person or persons in white robes standing near a pillar: 25%. Might be worth a gamble; might be outrageously dull.

A person or persons in white robes, standing near a pillar, in front of a background with two or more moons in the sky: 80%. Almost certainly excellent. Approaches 100% if there is a cat of unusual size somewhere near the spine.

Part of a woman’s face: 5%. Almost certainly a memoir of worst kind.

Part of a woman’s face, hazily obscured: 1%.

Rippling water: 0%. -10% if there is a woman’s face visible beyond the rippling water (the 10% means I will go watch a very bad movie instead). More »

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